Uzchess Cup 2025, Round 5

Abdusattorov leads, Maghsoodloo upsets Pragg.

I’m probably going to jinx the rest of the tournament, but so far it’s amazing what a rebuke it is to those who think that top-level chess is dying a draw death. (To be fair, none of these guys is Magnus Carlsen, but the world’s absolute elite is very well-represented here.) In today’s round four of the five games had a winner, and that included all the games involving players with plus scores.

Praggnanandhaa Rameshbabu was one of the co-leaders with 3/4 coming into the round and had Black against Parham Maghsoodloo, who was half a point behind. Maghsoodloo played a great (though not perfect) game against Pragg, showcasing the sort of middlegame where a player’s extra bishop in a two bishops vs. bishop and knight setting proves to be almost useless.

With the win Maghsoodloo leapfrogged past Pragg in the standings, and likewise Arjun Erigaisi after his win with Black against Shamsiddin Vokhidov. The game was a Steinitz Ruy that turned into something like a Modern Benoni, which often turns into a battle between Black’s queenside play and White’s play in the center (generally based on achieving e4-e5). In this game it was only Black who got to execute his ideas, and while the game went 68 moves the last 43 or so were mainly a matter of Black figuring out how to strike the decisive blow.

Despite their successes, Maghsoodloo and Erigaisi are still half a point out of first, as Nodirbek Abdusattorov, who co-led with Praggnanandhaa at the start of the round, also won, crushing Chithambaram Aravindh on the white side of an Averbakh Modern. Black’s 13…d5 was good - but not as a pawn sac. Had he regained the pawn to reach a slightly worse ending he probably would have been fine; instead, he overestimated his prospects in a pawn-down middlegame and was speedily outplayed. He was given a momentary reprieve by Abdusattorov’s 18.Qc2, but when Aravindh played 20…Rfe8 instead of 20…Ne5 his opponent took control and never gave him a second chance. Abdusattorov is having a great event so far, while Aravindh is finally struggling after what seems like two years of constant success. No doubt he’ll resume his upward trajectory soon; for now, he’s getting to enjoy “experience”, defined by someone as what you get when you don’t get what you want.

The fourth decisive game of the round was an actual Modern Benoni (as opposed to the ersatz one in Vokhidov-Erigaisi). Richard Rapport was the brave soul who essayed it, against Javokhir Sindarov, but things went badly for him from early on, and he was probably lost by move 20. He hung in there, though, and from move 31-36 the game was once again up in the air. Rapport’s 36…Qxd7 (instead of 36…Qxe4) was the decisive error, and Sindarov gave him no further chances.

Finally, there was one draw. Ian Nepomniachtchi tested Nodirbek Yakubboev’s preparation in a Four Knights English, and when Yakubboev passed (with flying colors) it was Nepo who had to stay out of trouble, which he did.

Here are today’s games, with my annotations.

It seems that there are no rest days in the tournament, so in a few hours we’ll see these pairings for round 6:

Praggnanandhaa (3) - Rapport (1.5)

Erigaisi (3.5) - Sindarov (3)

Aravindh (1.5) - Vokhidov (1)

Yakubboev (2) - Abdusattorov (4)

Maghsoodloo (3.5) - Nepomniachtchi (2)